Subject Guides to the Internet - where will they end?
by Deborah Lynne Wiley, President, Next Wave Consulting, Inc.
deb@consultnw.com
published in NFAIS Newsletter 38, No. 7 (July 1996) pp. 97-99.
Last month I examined a few of the robot-based search engines that comb the web seeking relevant documents to index. This month I will explore some of the more useful front-end applications of these search tools, the directories or subject trees. Using the broadest definition of the word, a directory can really be anything from a list of someone’s favorite sites, to an evaluated, organized list of web resources. The key concept is that the list is selective and organized in some way, usually by a human. I will discuss the variety of guides available, and touch upon some key uses of these for information providers.
Many of the directories to web sites are general indices - covering all topics from advertising to zoos and apparel to Zen. The oldest and most famous of these is YAHOO!, which lists over 200,000 sites within its hundreds of hierarchical categories, all branching from the 14 top level categories. It covers all types of web sites with little attempt at evaluation, except for marking exceptionally good sites with a sunglasses icon. A specialized search engine allows you to search all of the Yahoo listings, or just within a particular category and makes this guide a breeze to use. Similar in nature and layout, but not so comprehensive are Tradewave’s Galaxy and the Whole Internet Catalog (now renamed GNN Select). Choose the one whose categories best suit your needs. And be sure to submit your site to all of the subject guides you can find.
Several libraries have been trying to put some order into web sites. One particularly ambitious endeavor is the BUBL project from the UK. Using the Universal Decimal Classifications and funded with government money, they provide a very good resource for researchers and librarians. An experimental site from the University of Iowa, CyberStacks, is trying to classify resources under the Library of Congress system, but so far has only finished a small part of science and technology. OCLC has initiated an effort to catalog Internet resources by having volunteers create MARC records of internet resources. All of these sites obviously focus more on the academic resources than do the other general indices.
Another voluntary effort is the WWW Virtual Library. This originated in 1991 at CERN as they solicited subject experts to create and maintain lists of sites in their field. The coverage and updates vary depending on the time and motivation of the subject experts, and new categories are being added all the time. Send an email to the maintainers of pertinent subject areas to have your site included on their lists. Or, better yet, volunteer to maintain the list in your subject area. A nice complement to your own database or information service.
If you are looking for the “best” sites on the web, there are a number of guides that will rate and review sites for you. Magellan only lists reviewed sites, and ranks them with up to 4 stars. Point Communications uses its parent firm’s Lycos search engine to find sites, but then creates a separate database of reviews with ratings from 0 to 50. Point only want sites in the top 5%, by their standards. The excite! search engine also gets into the reviewing act with its Net Directory of over 50,000 Net Reviews. The Lycos A2Z site lists the most popular sites as determined by the number of links to each site. These sites tend to go more for entertainment value than content, but it’s worth a look to see what is being done. Don’t be too disappointed if your site is not included, especially if you vote for content over glitz.
There are many commercial and non-profit organizations creating directories to help entice customers to their sites. These may be general sites supported by advertising, like YAHOO!, Nerd World (whose categories are created automatically), or Starting Point. Or specialized sites like the World Wide Arts Resources which links to hundreds of artists, museums and resources, and offers three levels of “sponsorship” (Baroque, Impressionist and Minimalist). GNN has created a Business Directory where companies pay from $250-$1000 a year to be listed.
Other sites, like the European Business Directory, JumpCity, and the New Riders’ Internet Yellow Pages, use the online directories to promote similar products on CD-ROM or in print. Speaking of yellow pages, there are dozens of these kinds of sites. My favorite is the Big Book which includes the listings of nearly all the major yellow pages in the US, allows you to search in a variety of ways and displays the listings with a map of the location.
A few traditional information providers are creating value-added directories to topics within their scope. Cambridge Scientific Abstracts and Engineering Index have both created fee-based services for environmental and engineering professionals, respectively, which combine their traditional bibliographic databases with Internet resources. The American Mathematical Society has also created a wonderful collection of resources for the math world, and they only charge for access to the proprietary data.
As you can see, subject guides to the Internet abound. Yet everyone agrees that it is still very difficult to find the information you want on the internet. We will see increasing enhancements in the types of guides available and their formats. New ways to find mult-media information, such as images and sound files, need to be created, and the process of evaluating must become more rigorous. Traditional information providers have been slow to jump onto the internet bandwagon, but there are tremendous opportunities for those who can provide carefully filtered, up-to-date, easily accessible information at the right price. If you don’t do it, those less experienced in organizing information, but more internet-savvy will take your place.
A few select subject guides:
GENERAL SUBJECT GUIDES
LIBRARY/RESEARCH ORIENTED SUBJECT GUIDES
REVIEWED SITES
SPECIALIZED SITES
YELLOW PAGES
INFORMATION PROVIDER ENHANCED SITES
Copyright 1996, Next Wave Consulting, Inc.
